the white house saying that boehner counteroffer is nothing new, that it lacks specifics. but i will tell you, zoraida, that one house democratic aid telling cnn that it passed the laugh test. so certainly i guess it could have been worse in some estimations by democrats. >> i suspect some people were laughing. brianna keilar live at the white house for us, thank you. in the next half hour, we'll talk about the prospect for a fiscal cliff deal with california's democratic congressman xavier becerra. >>> the rain and flooding are relentless in northern california. four storms in less than a week left at least one death now attributed to those storms. and more rain is expected today. let's get right to meteorologist rob marciano. he is following it all from the cnn weather center in atlanta. good morning. >> good morning, zoraida. this is the worst stretch of storms that northern california has seen really in about two years. another punch today then we'll set up for a dry trend. the good news is that it has been dry so the ground, even though we've seen a lot of major flood